Patrick Roy, Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr, Mario Lemieux, Ken Dryden, Steve Yzerman. In their prime, they were all Stanley Cup champions, on more than one occasion. Yet none of them came close to winning the Stanley Cup as often as Red Kelly did. The NHL Hall of Famer is the only player to play for two teams of the nine recognized dynasties by the NHL. As part of the Red Wings of the 1950s and the Toronto Maple Leafs of the 1960s, Kelly already secured a legacy in the annals of hockey lore.

When I was a teenager, (circa 1991) and entering my second love affair with playing and watching hockey, I bought Red Kelly biography at a church bazaar. Published in 1971, it was already an antique. But for me and my hockey curiosity at the time, all I needed to transport myself to a time I could never have imagined. Over the next few years, other players from that era crept into my psyche. Something about the mid-1950s and early 1960s NHL appealed to me on a visceral level — the photographs and the descriptions used to convey the absolute hatred some of these teams had for one another during the playoffs is second to none. For example, Detroit and Montreal in the 1950s essentially owned the Stanley Cup; the only other team to win a cup that decade was Toronto in 1951. These rivalries were legit, as teams would face each other dozens of times annually, both in regular season play and during the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.

That it took until 2016 for the authorized Red Kelly to see publication speaks perhaps of Kelly’s understated nature. While never perceived as glamorous as the flashy stars he played alongside (Mr. Hockey Gordie Howe of Detroit, or “Big M” Frank Mahovlich of Toronto), Kelly was a linchpin of every squad he played for — a player coaches, fans, and coworkers could rely on.

Co-written by L. Waxy Gregoire and David M. Dupuis, The Red Kelly Story is an action-packed hockey memoir, but also the story of a family man who loves his wife (who he met in 1952), an Olympic skating champion named Andra McLaughlin — who, as a teenager, played hockey as a member of the Cheyenne Mountain Indians hockey team. Their courtship is right out of a 1950s period piece, with soda pop, visits with moms in farmhouses, and being described as “a fine young man” by her friends.

The Red Kelly Story gives die-hard hockey fans and even the casual fan insight into the game in ways one might not even think possible. For example, Kelly recalls watching a game between Chicago and Montreal in which he sat with top sportswriters of the era, and was appalled at how they missed so much action and so many great plays because they were drinking and smoking and laughing:

“It drove me crazy, I was eager to watch all the players, how they moved every which way, but these reporters missed half the plays. They’d be talking and laughing and would miss most of what actually happened on the ice. Then they’d ask each other and me what had happened, and these were supposedly the top sportswriters. I was shocked by their poor observation habits.”

The most enticing bits of The Red Kelly Story are those thrilling retellings of Stanley Cup Final action, when key goals were needed to defeat teams such as The Montreal Canadiens, which would have pitted arguably the two greatest goaltenders of all time: Terry Sawchuck for Detroit, and Jacques Plante for Montreal. Kelly’s respect for his rivals was equaled with his passion for winning.

In the chapter called “Toronto Metamorphosis,” Kelly describes the stressful month in which he refused a trade to the New York Rangers and announced his retirement, only to be lured to Toronto to play for the Leafs as the missing piece in a puzzle that coach Punk Imlach had to beat the Canadiens. This is where Red Kelly came in — Imlach felt he was key to handle the Canadiens big center, Jean Beliveau.

As a coach later in his NHL career, Kelly faced possibly even greater pressure than anything in his 8 Stanley Cup Final wins — especially in Toronto, possibly the toughest hockey town to coach in. The section outlining the conflict he faced as the Leafs head coach is rendered with honest emotion, but also told with multi-faceted sources, archival material, personal letters and firsthand accounts. It’s more authentic than well-produced sports news spot cover a night of hockey drama.

While every generation can lay claim to witnessing the golden era of hockey, the generation Kelly participated in gave hockey fans some of the most spirited rivalries in an era when the sport was evolving into television in addition to radio, giving way to the modern era, international stages, high definition cable telecasts, slick video games and multi-million dollar contracts. The quiet memories captured in the minds of those who lived the game so long ago comes alive The Red Kelly Story complimenting his storied NHL career and lasting impression he’s made to his peers and loved ones.

Keith Rosson‘s The Mercy of the Tide, which sees its release in February 2017, takes place in a small coastal town where mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the town’s beaches. It then unfurls into a superb monster story of a bygone era to be enjoyed in a new era.

At the heart of the story are Sam Finster, a senior in high school who mourning the death of his mother, his best friend, 19-year-old misfit Toad, and his sister Trina, a nine-year-old deaf girl who denies her grief by dreaming of a nuclear apocalypse as Cold War tensions rise. Then there is Sheriff Dave Dobbs and officer Nick Hayslip who are desperately trying to get to the bottom of the weird goings-on in the town.

The three youngsters mentioned above end up finding a human skeleton at the local park during a normal rainy Oregon day. They immediately notify the police (Nick Hayslip being the first to make it to the scene) and then the police then invite local archaeologists from the local school to come help dig up the bones.

It is quickly deduced that the bones are of a young female and are more than a hundred years old, and that if foul play was a part of the burial, those responsible would be long gone by now.

Nick begins to go into a downward spiral, simultaneously down memories of his troubled past as he descends into the rabbit hole looking into what exactly killed the poor girl buried out in the park. Eventually, he finds a microfiche of an 1860s newspaper which talks about a young native american girl who was found dead near a beach. The body was mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable, and the locals buried her close to that spot. The Native Americans believed it was an evil spirit who killed her.

As soon as the school staff finishes digging up the last of her bones, Sam experiences another personal tragedy – and from here the book barrels toward an epic monster-movie climax. Highly recommended.

From the ashes of Fun Fun Fun Fest, the perennial festival for local homies held previously in Downtown Austin, rose Sound on Sound Fest or SOS, a similarly curated festival founded by Fun House Services in the magical Sherwood Forest Renaissance Faire festival grounds about 40 miles outside of the capital city. While not without its challenges, seeing cancellations by Mac Demarco and Charles Bradley, and a near washout on day three that had people bitching, the consensus was that Sound on Sound’s inaugural effort was a success with room for improvement and growth.

Requiring nearly an hour drive from Austin, the impact of the new setting (the greatest variable in this new festival) depends on who you ask — those who made the daily two- to three-hour round-trip drive or ride had a different experience than those willing to risk the forecasts of inclement weather to set up tents in encampments with cheeky names such as Illuminaughty and The Medieval Band of Moo.

This especially rang true on day three when the grounds were evacuated and shuttle buses stopped mid-course to return to the safe confines of Austin HQ, the Mohawk, while others hunkered down in their tents to booze it up until the storms blew past to finally hear Courtney Barnett — who was almost destined to miss another festival after the Levitation Fest debacle in the spring — play an anticipated Austin-area set.

While some claim the festival footprint was nearly the same in size as its previous iteration at Auditorium Shores, Sherwood Forest had the capacity to hold three times the number of people in attendance — it felt like it was brimming with revelers in some parts, and like an abandoned amusement park in others. However, the Renaissance theme allowed festival organizers to embrace the uniqueness of the site and exploit the Medieval, from a fire-breathing dragon perched like a gargoyle at the corner of the main Dragon Lair stage, to the VIP section named “treat thyself.”

The clash of cultures was palpable — cool kids in their black tees wayfarers contrasted with LARPERs with their goblets of mead, and it made for interesting people-watching. One concert-goer chuckled and stated, “Even Ren Faires can get gentrified.” Despite the narrative of “SOS resurrects Fun Fun Fun Fest in a Medieval fairground,” it was the music and the vibe that compelled people to make the journey and create the story of SOS 2016.

November 4, 2016

The first day of any festival tends to draw the largest crowds, and Sound on Sound was no exception. Starting slowly with a strong undercard of Diet Cig, Shannon and the Clams, and Good Riddance, things really heated up with the driving energy of California experimental hip-hop group Death Grips and their shirtless and ripped yell-leader MC Ride around the time when most of the festival revelers had arrived for that evening or weekend. Kicking their set off with “Whatever I Want (Fuck Who’s Watching)” from 2014’s Government Plates and “Get Got,” from 2012’s The Money Store, the energy reached a high plateau that never subsided at the Dragon Lair.

Next up underneath a larger-than-life inflatable fist with finger gun were the antics of rappers Killer Mike and El-P from Run the Jewels, who recovered from blowing the bass on their first song “Run the Jewels” to bring out Gangsta Boo to sing Akinyele Back’s lyrics on “Love Again.” They closed out with the new single “Talk To Me” to an enthusiastic crowd. Shutting down the Dragon Lair was the New York electro-pop duo Phantogram featuring the swoon-worthy vocalist/keyboardist Sarah Barthel and cigarette-toking vocalist/guitarist Josh Carter who launched into “Black Out Days” from 2014’s Voices and 2011’s “Turning into Stone” before ending in new track “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” from Three.

After midnight, the Forest Stage on the other side of the grounds, which featured the heavier sounds of the fest such as FIDLAR earlier in the night, packed in late for punk rock legends, the Descendents. In anticipation of the presidential election, Milo Aukerman started off their set by saying on Wednesday morning, we may all be saying “Everything Sux!” and launched into their 1996 song of the same name to a wave of crowd surfers plucked by the bouncers and pushed to the side of the photo pit. For those who chose not to camp, the evening came to a close, but for the outdoor adventurers, the party continued, as it did the subsequent nights at the Disco Dungeon and Two Knights Comedy Stage.

November 5, 2016

The light rain that fell on Saturday morning held off for the rest of day two, bringing a gloomy day with cooler temperatures that was a perfect backdrop for Saturday’s acts. Opening at 1 p.m. on Saturday, the early afternoon had the thin crowd mostly chilling on blankets and the grass by the stages or lingering around the campgrounds outside the gates. Others, including this reviewer, were busy trying figure out where in the hell they left their cell phones the night before.

Hosting the indie rock, Jack Tatum-centered outfit from Virginia, Wild Nothing and ’80s punk rockers The Dead Milkmen, the Dragon Lair stage began slowly filling in as the sun began dipping behind the castles and cottages. Legends The Dead Milkmen really got the energy up as fans sang along to hits from 1985’s Big Lizard in My Backyard, such as “Tiny Town,” and a version of “Bitchin’ Camaro” that hilariously detoured into a tribute to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” before circling back to the original.

As darkness descended, the crowd at the Dragon Lair sat impatiently for a cheesy and uninspired performance from one half of Outkast, Big Boi. Across the grounds at the wooded Forest Stage, Australian synth psych band Jagwar Ma captivated the audience with a hazy set with the deep bass tune “Loose Ends” from the October 2016 release Every Now and Then. Their brand of dreamy electronic jams set the tone for the evening’s highly anticipated headliners Beach House and Purity Ring.

Exemplifying the low stage lighting that had many photographers cursing the Dragon Lair stage was the set by dream pop group Beach House. In nearly complete darkness and shrouded in a cloak was vocalist Victoria Legrand, who slumped moodily over her keys as the band opened with “Wild” from 2012’s Bloom and “PPP” from 2015’s Depression Cherry. Dropping the hood to expose her auburn curls, she finished with fan favorite “10 Mile Stereo” before falling back into the shadows.

Shutting down the Dragon Lair on day two, with a stage production that this year’s festival will be remembered by, was Purity Ring, the Canadian synthpop duo of Megan James in Stevie Nicks-worthy gossamer gown and Corin Roddick sitting behind what looked like massive Q-tips that lighted up as he triggered tones. Backed by a gridded curtain of LED light beads that glowed in geometric patterns to the music, the duo kicked off with James atop a cubic riser striking poses as she sang “Fineshrine” from their debut album Shrines and “Repetition” off of 2015’s Another Eternity. To the chagrin of fans, she stopped towards the end of their set to announce that the band was taking a long hiatus after the show. While the mellower darker tones of Beach House and Purity Ring slowly rocked the crowd at the Dragon Lair, across the park, electronic producer Alexander Ridha of Boys Noize closed out the evening with a dance set that left what was left of the Saturday crowd on a high that continued to the campgrounds.

November 6, 2016

As alluded to, the weather forecast for the weekend was grim, but only a few light showers fell on Saturday morning hours before the gates opened. Sunday was another story. Just before Bully was to take the stage at 3 p.m.,a strong band of thunderstorms descended on the festival grounds. Organizers decided to evacuate the attendees and encourage everyone to seek shelter. For those on shuttles it meant turning around and returning to Austin in some cases. One report from social media spoke of a shuttle stopping in Walmart parking lot until the weather blew over and festival goers going in to buy beer and bring back to share with the other stranded revelers — this is the homie spirit that makes this type of festival so special to Austinites. Those in the campgrounds hunkered down and boozed it up in their tents until the fest resumed a few hours later. With some schedule modifications, Young Thug closing out SOS, the show went on. Thursday was a highly anticipated act, performing after the rain delay, one of only five reunions shows.

Courtney Barnett was also high on many’s list for Sunday. After her break out performances at SXSW 2015 and ACL taping in November 2015, fans were eager to see her play in Austin again during Levitation Fest in May only to have that slip from their hands due to bad Texas weather. Barnett was not going to let it happen again at SOS! She took the stage as the storms passed to excited fans, booting out tunes from her debut album Sometimes I sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit. Bob Mould and White Lung were also able to perform on Day Three. Organizers did the bands that didn’t get to perform a solid by booking a Monday night make-up show at the Mohawk. Margin Walker did a great job on this inaugural fest with bad weather and a challenging new location — the spirit of Fun Fun Fun Fest is still alive, and we can’t wait to see what they bring in 2017.

Thetis Island (British Columbia) author Ann Eriksson always delivers a social message within the worlds of her novels. The Performance, Eriksson’s fifth, is no exception.

It is a compelling story set in New York City that features a young, upcoming classical musician named Hana who is studying piano at the Juilliard, and Jacqueline, an older street person who shows up at all her concerts, knitting in the second row. What brings together this unlikely pair is a large part of the mystery of the novel, which novelist Gail Anderson Dargatz has described as “masterful, confident, and lyrical.”

The Performance is eloquent in its description of the strikingly different worlds that coexist with a single city, the wealthy circles of Manhattan’s cultural elite, and the stark existence of those who struggle to survive from day to day.

What prompted you to write your new novel, The Performance?

A crime was committed and I was a direct victim of that crime, but many others were indirectly affected. It was this ripple effect of crime that I wanted to explore.

Does that mean this is an autobiographical novel?

I’m not a concert pianist or homeless and have never lived in Manhattan, so The Performance is not autobiographical in the true sense of the word. However, the emotional essence underlying the story is certainly based on my own reactions to a betrayal at a criminal level. I felt victimized of course, but also embarrassed at having made some bad choices that put me in the position to be victimized, and a lot of shame, which might seem odd as I was a victim not a perpetrator, but I think it can be a common reaction. What had happened to me did not fit in with the way I saw myself: confident, in charge of my life, careful.

The Performance takes place in New York as well as the Canadian West Coast. Why did you choose to locate this novel in New York, and what preliminary work went into developing the setting?

I have to say I thought I was a bit crazy setting The Performance in one of the most iconic cities in the world and where I had never lived. Even more audacious that I was a Canadian. How dare I. But the setting was really dictated by the characters and their story.

The place where the lives of Hana and Jacqueline collide had to be such an iconic city, and one with a starkly visible division of wealth and social class. The first time I went to New York, years before The Performance was ever conceived, I was struck by the juxtaposition of extravagant wealth with the most impoverished circumstances one could imagine. So when the novel started to take shape in my mind, the setting was always New York. I spent time in New York twice while doing the research for The Performance. I was very aware that I could never, as an outsider, do the city justice if I tried to write about it from a New Yorker’s point of view, which is why I made both of the main characters Canadian, both seeing the city through the eyes of a newcomer, the way I was seeing it, as a visitor rather than a local.

New York is a big place, so I needed to narrow the setting down to a specific neighborhood. Manhattan, where classical music has such a big presence, with the Juilliard school, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center all within walking distance of one another, was a natural place for Hana to live. But what about Jacqueline? Would there enough of a homeless presence in such an elite and wealthy area of the city to make their meeting believable?

or my first research trip I arranged a homestay in Manhattan through a home exchange organization I belong to, with a friendly and generous woman whose lovely old apartment is situated in the heart of the Upper West Side, at Broadway and 86th Street, a couple of blocks from Central Park. When she ushered me into her den, where I was to sleep, I was astonished to find a grand piano occupying most of the space there. It was as if I had walked into Hana’s apartment with its creaking radiators, claw foot tub, and the sounds of the Manhattan traffic outside. The next day I began to explore the Upper West Side, expecting that I would have to travel further afield to find enough of a homeless presence; I was surprised to find homeless people everywhere I went, in doorways, on church steps, in Central Park, panhandling on the sidewalk by the Lincoln Center, at the base of opulent skyscrapers. Sad as this reality was for each of those people, I knew I had found the specific setting for the novel, Jacqueline’s “hood.”

Over the course of my two research trips to Manhattan, I attended concerts, interviewed classical pianists, toured the Isaac Stern Auditorium, the Lincoln Center, the Juilliard. I visited homeless shelters, sat on the sidewalk beside street people and talked to them about their lives, interviewed outreach workers and on one memorable night, accompanied a homeless outreach team as they drove through the underbelly of Manhattan looking for rough sleepers. The living conditions I witnessed were profound and disturbing. Every dire situation related in The Performance is based on the real lives of real people living in the Upper West Side.

In the beginning, Hana Knight’s character is unaware of a lot, which makes her discoveries all the more realistic. How hard was it to keep her out of the loop, so to speak? You, of course, knew what was going to happen, but she did not. Was this a challenge?

Hana as a young woman in Manhattan is naïve and unaware, coming from a rather sheltered homeschooled life and fairly insular family, and, of course, absorbed by her music. But the adult Hana, the narrator, knows exactly what has happened, and she strings the story of her naïve past out for Tomas and for the reader from her own perspective, almost as if she is writing the novel she appears in.

I see The Performance as three embedded stories. There is the story that Hana tells Tomas, the story she tells the reader, and then there’s the story she tells herself. Hana is not completely honest in the telling of any of the three. Each involves secrecy, denial, self-justification, and either naivety or downright lies. I wanted the reader to piece together his or her own version of the story of Hana and Jacqueline, including bits from the reader’s own life and experiences, and ultimately, I wanted the reader to start to question or doubt Hana’s story. I wanted to recreate the psychology that follows a breach of trust: the disability to trust again. Was any of Hana’s story true? Was she pulling the wool over her audience’s eyes? And for what end? How reliable is she as a narrator?

Of course, such a structure is a balancing act to pull off. I needed to provide motivation for each of the decisions she makes about what and when she tells who. The process, I imagine, was a bit like writing a mystery or a detective novel, rolling out the clues one by one so the reader thinks she is half a step ahead of the Hana, but still in the dark until the climax.

At an early encounter at Hana’s apartment, Jacqueline refuses to accept Hana’s free tickets to her concerts and insists on finding means to pay for them. I found this added darkness to Jacqueline’s character, indirectly making the reader feel uneasy about her intentions. Before putting those characters in a scene together in which they speak, how did you carve out their separate worlds in the novel?

This novel lived in my head for quite a long time before I wrote anything down on paper. Hana, the young classical pianist, in my mind, stepping outside from a concert hall and seeing a woman, who became Jacqueline, watching her from across the street. A creepy moment. This scene played over and over in my imagination for months. Who were these two women? Why were they where they were, at that time, in that particular city. How would their paths cross? I knew there had to be a mystery. I had to answer those questions for myself and for them.

My conception of character and plot is very much cinematic, both at first and during the writing and editing phase (Maybe I should have been a filmmaker). I seldom find the result completely satisfactory, but that is what drives me forward, that translation of the visual into the literary.

Is there a bit of Hana Knight in all of us? Is there a bit of Jacqueline in all of us?

The simple answer to the question is yes. The more complex answer is that I believe every person is capable of anything, given the right circumstances, from the altruism of a saint, to the most heinous act of evil, even murder. This human capacity makes writing literary fiction endlessly fascinating as it is all about exploring the range of human actions and emotions. Why do we do the things we do? How do we feel about it, about ourselves, before, during, and after? Why are we as individuals or as a society, a species, so capable of self-deception, or cruelty of the greatest degree?

I know I’m never going to be a famous classical pianist like Hana, but I’ve been part of a family, been betrayed by a friend, betrayed a friend, been in love, fallen out of love, even told a few lies (my husband the poet jokes that he tells the truth, I tell the lies). As for Jacqueline, one thing I learned through interviewing street dwellers and reading about the homeless is how fine the line is between being okay and not being okay, having a warm home and having to sleep rough under a tree. For some the line is wider than for others, but a single moment can change a person’s life forever, whether it be the result of an accident, a death, an illness, the choices of another, or as in The Performance, a crime.

Set on Halloween weekend, 2016 at an idyllic park just miles away from the bustling French Quarter was the 16th Annual Voodoo Music + Art Experience. With R&B star The Weeknd, metal gods Tool, and Canadian rockers Arcade Fire headlining the festival with a solid undercard of established and emerging acts, there was something for just about everyone, from club kids to your metal-loving uncle.

The culture and soul of New Orleans permeated the event with lots of art installations, dancing (outside of the EDM stage), and creative costumes. The weather also cooperated over the three days, as it was dry with highs in the mid-80s and without any interruptions (like in 2015, when bad weather washed out the last day).

October 28, 2016

Day one saw the largest crowd of the weekend as, un-ironically, the Weeknd served as the main headliner, drawing in the youngest audience. Starting with “The Hills” and one of the first live performances of “False Alarm,” Abel Tesfaye, with a more streamlined haircut, got the crowd pumped all of the way through to “I Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy.”

Local ties to New Orleans provided G-Eazy and Mutemath sizeable crowds on Day One. G-Eazy came on stage dressed as the Joker from comics and belting out “Random” and crowd favorites “I Mean It” and “Me Myself and I” that included a New Orleans brass band.

Fresh off their tour with Twenty One Pilots, New Orleans-based Mutemath got the crowd moving with “Used To” and “Light Up,” before acrobatic lead singer Paul Meany brought his daughter onstage to assist on “Reset” off of Mutemath’s 2006 self-titled album.

Reignwolf was a standout on Day One as the leather clad blues rocker writhed and contorted across the stage to “Hardcore” and “In the Dark,” and at one point walked out to the crowd and teetered on the edge of barricade to perform “Electric Love” to the audience that clapped along to the beat. Foals from the UK was another rocking band from the first day; their set exploded with energy as lead vocalist and guitarist Yannis Philippakis jumped around the stage and into the crowd.

Earlier in the day a number of featured artist gave the fest a more soulful sound. The Seratones brought their bluesy rock from Shreveport; Mayer Hawthorne wooed the crowd with tumbler of whiskey in hand; and Wild Belle (in matching black jackets) performed an eclectic pop sound with touches of reggae.

October 29, 2016

Day Two had a lineup that brought out the headbangers. A rare appearance by Tool drew a crowd with a harder edge that was much older than fans from the previous day. Covering material from Aenima, Lateralus, and Opiate, Tool energized a crowd of fans that sang along to every one of the shrouded lead singer Maynard James Keenan’s words.

The rocking jams were easy to be found at City Park on Saturday with Cage the Elephant and Claypool Lennon Delirium laying down some fuzzed out guitar tunes. Cage the Elephant’s lead singer Matt Shultz took the prize of the weekend for physical fitness by running and jumping back and forth across the stage and into the crowd as he belted “Cry Baby,” “In One Ear,” and “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.”

Les Claypool of Primus fame and Sean Lennon (breaking from his Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger work) recently released Monolith of Phobos, an album with a strong psychedelic vibe. Starting with “Cricket and the Genie” and “Breath of a Salesman,” the duo led a jam session that ended covering Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” and the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

Grammy-winning Swedish heavy metal band Ghost took the Halloween vibe to a whole new level on day two with their satanic-themed theatrical costuming. Lead vocalist Papa Emeritus III’s and his nameless devil-horned ghouls were downright spooky as they hit the crowd with “Square Hammer” and “Cirice” from 2016’s Meliora.

During day two, a few emerging acts had performances worth noting. Nashville-based bands All Them Witches brought stoner psych rock, and their crosstown friends Bully performed their second wave of female-fronted grunge. Over on the South Cross stage, Texas’s Shakey Graves had the crowd singing along to his self-described “hobo-folk” while wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume and cheesy grin.

October 30, 2016

A smaller crowd on day three meant that everyone who did snatch up a ticket got pretty good views of bands that ranged from hip-hop and EDM to indie rock. Despite reports of the band playing new material at a house show the previous night, Arcade Fire stuck to their hits from “Funeral,” “Reflektor,” “The Suburbs,” and “Neon Bible,” with nary a peep of the new. Not that anyone was complaining — the 13-piece band thrilled the audience from “Ready to Start” and “Suburbs” all the way to end with “Wake Up” from 2004’s Funeral that had fans harmonizing along with Will Butler as they exited the festival grounds one last time.

Anderson .Paak and the Free Nationals got into the Halloween theme on day three by coming on to the stage to Guns N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” looking like a hair metal band. With sharpened chops from a slew of festivals in 2016, their performance was one of the best of the weekend. .Paak smoothly moved from “Come Down” to “Milk and Honey” before taking his seat at the drum kit for “Put Me Thru.”

Top awards for showmanship at Voodoo Fest belong to Puscifer and Beats Antique. Both bands showed up with awesome stage productions worthy of an off Broadway show. Puscifer, led by Maynard James Keenan of Tool fame, went full-on Lucha Libre with elaborate Mexican wrestling outfits and truncated wrestling ring. It was fun watching the band perform “The Remedy” while two female wrestlers had an actual match on stage.

Finally, the trio the makes up Beats Antique captivated the audience with their experimental world fusion sounds paired with the belly dancing of the beautiful Zoey Jakes. Even though not everyone was familiar with their tunes, hearing “Egyptic” and “Beauty Beats” performed live turned some of the audience into instant fans. Jakes was joined on stage at various points by three other belly dancers that performed with her on the drums and even slayed a 20-foot-tall inflatable dragon on stage. The bands and the setting made this undoubtedly a top fest of the year.

Ford Madox Ford is the creation of brothers Chip and Tony Kinman of the seminal West Coast punk band The Dils and alt-country groundbreakers Rank and File.

With Chip on vocals and Tony producing and providing backing vocals the brothers have set their sites on the Wilbert Harrison blues classic “Let’s Work Together” in the hopes of spreading a little goodwill after the 2016 election and to help let the healing begin. Made popular by Canned Heat, the Blues hallmark has also been covered by Brian Ferry — and Ford Madox Ford’s single will be released November 4, 2016 (pre-orders begin October 21st). Today, the track debuts at VerbicideMagazine.com, and you can stream it below.

The band debuted on Porterhouse Records in 2016 with their seven-inch “Expect It” and will spend the upcoming winter months writing and recording what Chip is referring to as a “statement” full length recording.

]]>0jacksonhttp://www.verbicidemagazine.comhttp://www.verbicidemagazine.com/?p=607752016-10-20T02:45:04Z2016-10-20T02:45:04ZContinue Reading →]]>We’re reaching the end. Though we know there is more to come in 2017, the final releases of the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez fourth quarter release extravaganza is nearing. Beyond the fact that having a career’s worth of music for some musicians dropped on us is a tremendous gift, these releases have opened a new window into the creativity and talent of Rodriguez-Lopez; and at its close, the man who you thought had no more tricks up his sleeve unleashes his most unexpected venture with the first of these last four releases, Weekly Mansions.

Co-written with his brother Marcel, the opening track of Weekly Mansions is almost a trap. It has to be there just to make you think you’re in for a long, strange trip through Ambient Noiseland. Rhythmic drums accompanied by long sustained synthesizer notes drone on and on, as distorted hammerings join a cavalcade of other sounds, leading nowhere until the song drowns out. Disappointment swept across my face at first listen. The next track, “Rotten Straw Lips,” opens with what I like to call “muted wub-wub percussion” — just another sign that we have opened another experimental album in the ORL discography. But with the sudden crack of an electronic whip, “Rotten Straw Lips” turns on a dime and welcomes you to Omar and Marcels’ electro-dance album — and by fucking god, it is glorious!

The album’s 14 tracks alternate between experiential connecting audio, intertwined with fist-pumping, body groove-inducing delight. While many of these connecting tracks do have their own melody and attractiveness, there are seven solid, undeniably delicious tracks that really make Weekly Mansions shine. Even the lyrical trip of the album feels a bit different for ORL; playful in ways, but still cryptic — yet lofty — in others.

“They sat at home in boredom throwing birthdays…out of the window to the rain,” are the lyrics to open up the eighth track, “A Little Old Picnic in Fort Co.” So strange, though light in ways; it’s a mix I never felt I got from Omar’s lyrics. As the song’s chorus pumps up and out there is sense of power that comes crashing down as the lyrics and beat meet for one glorious moment: “The tenderness of wolves, you’re in their care. You try and nurse the wounds; they’re always there…sending thunder.” I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to be severely pissed if this is the only album of its ilk we get from Omar and his family — bring me part two right now!

Now don’t get overly excited and expect to hear any familiar musical cues from Omar’s past works, but I have a feeling that the next release in line, Zapopan, was either the afterbirth of songs that were being prepped for The Mars Volta’s Noctourniquet, or maybe the skeletons of the songs being worked on after that album was recorded. I’ll get back to that point soon, but I don’t want to jump around too much, so let’s start with the album opener.

The first three tracks are all one song that you’ve probably heard. It is the track “Pi4” from those demos again. As each part of the song starts to really build and create a crescendo, the song fades out and the next track picks up 10 seconds down the song. It’s still very interesting and listenable, but I do wish the track came as a whole and showcased those top moments that get lost in transition.

The album does take a bit of a turn though at its fourth track, opening up a different sound. Let’s have a test: based on that track’s title, do you think you may know what it is? The song is titled, “What’s left in you.” Now, if you were keen enough to recognize the lyric, or scanned ahead just a bit, you’ll realize it is another version of “Sea is Rising.” This version is 100 percent the track from the demo songs, just with some extra bleeps and bloops added on top. It’s still a great song and does its job in opening up the soundscape of Zapopan.

Let’s get back to that Noctourniquet quote though. There are tracks littered through Zapopan that feel as if they belong next to “The Malkin Jewel” on some strange lost EP. “Spell Broken Hearts,” which is by far my favorite track and houses the most adorable Omar yelp, has that very distinct krautrock sound. If you told me it was a lost B-side, I’d totally buy it, no questions asked. The same goes for ways for “Harboring a Sadist,” though it may require a little more of a stretch of imagination to believe it.

Much like the entire release schedule, the final releases, while not bad, don’t have the same staying power and melodic balance to hold my interest for a full listen. Nom De Guerre Cabal is a very strange album to me on two levels. For the most part, most of the songs and so oversaturated and loose that I’m not sure where the songs even begins. It’s hard to even distinguish the instruments in the songs, and I find myself moving from track to track, looking for something different. The strangest thing though is that I think the title track is not even from the same recording session. It’s the one song I really like off the album — but on an album that feels to be built on the trademark staccato percussion of Deantoni Parks (though this is still just a guess on my part), the song kicks off with some very hard-hitting, dominating Thomas Pridgen-like beats. Again, this is not a song that sounds like anything The Mars Volta put out, but it screams to be the book-ending tracks of a Volta album. When you get Nom De Guerre, put the title track in a playlist immediately followed by “L’Via,” and tell me they don’t belong next to each other in a twisted way.

Some Need It Lonely closes out the release loop in a similar way, as a group of disjointed tracks that never seem to find their footing. The only standout track is the opening song, “Bitter Sunsets,” which is actually just a more accessible version of a song with the same title from Nom De Guerre. I can’t help but be a little disappointed though. After seeing that title Some Need It Lonely, I really felt like I was in for “Umbrella Mistress: Part 2,” but we can’t always get what we desire.

All of that being said, this massive audio drop from ORL couldn’t have been more successful. As a fan, it far exceeded my expectations as a whole, and it was exactly what I needed. I’m sad it is coming to a close, but thrilled for what is coming next.

When the political climate in his home of Istanbul started to take drastic turns for the worse, Ilker Kandur decided to relocate himself to one of the western world’s most historically progressive locales, and the home of many of his musical influences, San Francisco.

Teaming up with Berkeley’s legendary Fantasy Studios to handle production duties, Kandur was partnered with Dawn Richardson (4 Non Blondes, Tracy Chapman) on the drums and the pair immediately bonded over classic rock influences. The resulting EP, aptly titled Fantasy, features four heavy-hitting-yet-melodic alternative rock tracks that span the breadth of their creator’s influences.

Today, the track “Save Me” premieres exclusively at VerbicideMagazine.com. You can stream it below. The single sees its release on October 19, 2016, as Kandur performs at Brick and Mortar in San Francisco. The EP will be released in Spring 2017.